Money mistakes, I’ve made quite a few, and I’m sure I’ll make a lot more, but some of them I have managed to catch and stop. Others linger on like a bad cold. If you are making any of these money mistakes, know that it’s ok, but do your best to try and change them. You’ll find that they can save you a lot of money over time.
(Update: the more I think of these, the more I keep adding, apparently there is no end to my money dumb-ness)
Bank Fees
You are already giving the bank your money to hold for you, does it make sense that you have to pay for that right?
Yeah, when I looked at it that way, it didn’t make sense to me either.
If you are paying banking fees you need to start looking around for a new bank. Period.
There are plenty of banks and credit unions that offer no-fee banking, Find one that makes sense for you and get started with switching over. If you are looking for some savings accounts my friend at SavingJunkie has a bunch to check out.
Movies
I love going to the movies, but by the time our family of 4 goes to a movie, and gets some treats, it starts to cost a good chunk of change (those tickets add up!)
Plus if it ends up being a movie your kids are going to love, you will likely end up buying it for them when it’s released on BluRay. Adding up the total cost of the movie to over $100. That’s nuts!
Switch to getting your movies from the library and enjoy them guilt (and cost) free!
Movie Treats
These are extremely overpriced, there’s about $2 worth of food in there and you are paying $20 for the privilege
Do yourself a favor, eat before you get there and do yourself the favor. Or be like everyone else in the theater and sneak in your food.
Books
I have a new rule, I only buy books that I’m going to read at least 2-3 times, or use it as a reference.
Sure books give great dollar per entertainment hour, but why bother with them when you have a library with all of them sitting there, absolutely free!?
Library for the win!
Magazines
Ditto on magazine subscriptions, your local library probably has every magazine under the sun.
Go there and use them.
Once again, library for the win!
Gym Membership
Fun fact, I owned and operated a gym. I can safely say that 90% of our members used the facility less than once a month.
Or put it another way, 90% of people were financing the other 10% to workout.
Gym memberships are recurring expenses that you likely aren’t using.
So if you find yourself in the 90% (no judging, we’re all there at some point) and you aren’t planning on using the membership then cancel it. Save yourself the money and workout at home.
Fast Food
Fast Food (or as I call it crowdfunding a bunch of teenagers to cook subpar food for you) is probably one of the biggest wastes of money.
I think we can all agree that we make a better homemade burger than any fast food joint out there. So why bother with less than great?
I get the convenience, I do my fare share of take out, but you are throwing money out the window (literally if you are doing the drive through… I wonder if that’s where the expression is from?!) when you get fast food.
Start to replicate these meals at home, then freeze extra in advance. When you have premade burgers in the freezer ready to go, you will see that the extra 20 minutes to cook them is worth the $20 savings.
Subscription Services
There are a lot of subscription services (see gym memberships and magzines above) out there.
These are great if you use them, but more than likely we subscribe to them and use them initially and then fall prey to our laziness (I know this way too well) never use them, and are too lazy to cancel them.
Give yourself a rule that if you don’t use a service for 0 or 60 days you will cancel it. You can always renew it later on, but do yourself, and your wallet, a favor and cancel it.
In App-Purchases
My friends kids are always asking if they can buy things on Fortnite. When I asked them how much they were spending it was in the hundreds. All for a free game. Now from a business perspective, that’s a pretty cool model.
But as a middle aged adult, I’m looking at this and going “You’re paying for something and not getting anything of real value.”
Sure it’s big for the kids, and they desperately need it in the moment, but then they immediately want the next thing they don’t have. So it’s a vicious cycle that never ends.
Do yourself a favor and keep the free games, free.
Cable
I’m basically paying $50 a month for cable right now and that is too much. I would love to cut the cord but our internet is dicey at best, so until then I’m stuck.
This is frustrating because 95% of our viewing is Netflix, I’m sure we are near a breaking point. If you are paying for cable ask yourself how much you use it.
Many of us are just using it for one or two shows. Take the initiative and see if there is another way to watch them.
Spoiled Food
This one grinds my gears, we find it a cardinal sin to have to throw out food that has spoiled.
We hate, hate, hate throwing out food because it just shows that we have been lazy (or eating at restaurants, remember we’re the epitome of imperfect).
To get around this we are freezing things before they go bad, and only buying smaller amounts of fresh produce.
Bottled Water
I will not buy bottled water on principle. Instead we got a water bottles and a Brita to filter out all of the bad stuff and we bring those whenever we leave the house. That way we always have water with us no matter where we go.
Buy yourself some Contigo water bottles and a Brita water filter and you will be thankful for all the money you save.
Cloud Storage
I get it, it’s tempting to let Apple store all of your stuff, but we switched to Google Photos (you can store unlimited photos as long as you use their algorithm, and I’m pretty sure I mispelled that too) and it’s awesome.
They have some great features and sharing is easy. Right now Google is winning this, they give you suggestions and touch up photos, make photo books, it’s really cool.
For all your other documents you can use Dropbox.
Or you can do what I did and buy a secure cloud based storage like pcloud.
OK So a Few More Than 10 Dumb Mistakes
Bottom line, we’re all human, we make mistakes, we learn from them. I’m hoping you take something away from this so you can save yourself some money too.
Please share my dumb-ness so that others can be smarter
